We are going to continue our series in the church this morning. Over the past couple of weeks, we've considered the office of elder, and that is an important office, but it is not the only one that Christ has given to his church. So this morning we want to consider the second of the two perpetual offices in the church, the office of deacon. And we're going to do that by considering the passage in Acts chapter six. So please, if you would turn there with me to Acts chapter six. And we'll see how God provides these first deacons in the early church there in Jerusalem. So Acts chapter six, beginning in verse one, let me read this text for us. This is the word of the Lord. Now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Procurus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you are the king and head of your church. You love your church. And you love your church so much that you have given her deacons, these godly men raised up to this important calling, to be your example to the flock of your service and of your care for our needs. And so we pray that by your spirit, your spirit would move during the sermon and so prick the hearts of those men whom you are calling to hold this office here at Christ the King. for the good of our church family, for the good of the church universal, and for your glory. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, throughout this series, we've considered how Christ loves his church, how Christ is building his church, how the church is the only institution in the world which Christ himself promises that he will build, where he himself is the head and mediator of this group of people. He alone as head sustains his church. And because this is true, because of that, we also know that there's an enemy of the church. that Satan hates the church and he will do anything as the enemy of God to weaken the church, to diminish her, to destroy her, to divide her. And we see him try to do this in this chapter of Acts. As the early church grew, as it exploded exponentially in number, he was not sitting idly by, but he sought to divide and to weaken her. But how did the church get to this point? Where did we get to in this story? Where does the office of deacon fit into this overall narrative? I want to consider just briefly the context of this passage as we jump right in to chapter six. So as you may well know, the book of Acts is a sequel. Luke wrote, obviously, the gospel according to Luke. He wrote the book that bears his name, but he followed that up with this second book, the Acts of the Apostles, or maybe better, the Acts of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit is working now through the Apostles to expand and build and grow his church. And so the book of Acts tells the story of how the church is being built. And it begins in chapter 1 with the disciples. They're with Christ, and Christ ascends up into heaven. And he promises that not long after, he will send his very own spirit to empower them to do the work that he has called them to do, that great commission to go and make disciples of all nations. And so as they're waiting in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost in chapter two, the spirit does pour out and fall upon them, rushes upon them, and empowers them to go and to fulfill this mission. And so we see that mission begins now in earnest. where these disciples and apostles, they begin speaking in other languages, known languages that were unknown to them, but known to the vast amount of people that had gathered in Jerusalem from all over on the day of Pentecost for the feast. And so this event begins the fulfillment of the promise and the commission that Jesus gave in chapter one, verse eight, that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. But it starts here in Jerusalem. And from this initial evangelistic event, this initial sermon that Peter preached in chapter two, Luke tells us that the church in Jerusalem grew that day by about 3,000 souls in one day. And from there, the disciples, they grew in boldness and they went out. They healed the sick. They preached the gospel. They preached the word. Some were arrested. Some were eventually let out. But many were being saved. Many were being brought in to the kingdom of God. But not everything was perfect. Not everything was perfect in this early church. Of course, the disciples, they faced the persecution from outside the church. Satan was busy working to persecute the church from without, but he was also now busy working from within to cause division and problems. How could this be? Isn't it so astonishing that the early church who had the apostles themselves, witnesses of the resurrected Christ, that problems like this could still arise in the church? Would not the members of the church be so preoccupied with hearing about Jesus from the apostles themselves, be so preoccupied with this amazing church growth that they're seeing? Would they not have been too busy to complain and to murmur like we see here? But it was not so. And that makes an important point for us. That first church, like our churches today, they're made up with the same kind of people. They were made up of sinners like you and me in need of God's grace. And the beautiful, the wonderful thing about this passage is it gives us this example, this narrative that instructs us how the church is to function. how we can see that Satan will always seek to divide the church. He hates the church, will seek to destroy her by any means necessary. But we see how God is at work in the midst of these attacks and these problems to bring about good for his people and to demonstrate his glory and his mercy toward his people. So let's turn our attention now to this passage. We're gonna consider a three-part structure that comes right out of the text. In response to the problem that was arising in Jerusalem, Christ gives his people the office of deacon. The deacon is the office of sympathy and the office of service that serves the church after the example of Christ himself. So let's consider this passage and this office from these three points. First, the problem that we see in verse one. And then the solution to the problem, verses two through six, and finally the result in verse seven. The problem, the solution, and the result. Let's look at those three things. First, the problem. We've said it already. The devil hates the church. He attempted to destroy the church through persecution from the outside. Now he turns his attention inward, attacking the church from within. So look back at verse one. It says that now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, see the church was exploding. Many, many were being added to the number day by day. Thousands upon thousands were being added from chapter two all the way through to chapter six now. But with this exponential growth in the church, there arose opportunities for bitterness, for grumbling, and for sin. And so we keep reading and we see that while this church was growing and exploding in numbers, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So we see here is the problem. The city of Jerusalem had a significant minority of Hellenistic or Greek speaking Jews that lived in the city. And these were Jews who were either born abroad or had spent much of their life abroad outside of Jerusalem, outside of Judean in that area. But now they had moved back to the city, perhaps when they were at an older age and they wanted to retire or spend their remaining time here in this holy city. But they did not speak Aramaic or at least not as well as the Hebraic Jews who lived in the city of Jerusalem, who would have spoken Aramaic. And in fact, there would have been some resentment between these two groups, even anger towards these Greek speaking or Hellenistic Jews, especially from groups like the Pharisees who looked down upon them and looked upon them as outsiders. But then something incredible happens. On the day of Pentecost, these Greek speaking Jews hear the gospel preached to them in their native Greek. except it was perfect Greek. But it wasn't spoken by a Greek-speaking Jew, it was spoken by Galileans, it was spoken by Hebrews, it was spoken by Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, all the disciples, all the apostles, they're speaking in languages not known to them. At that moment, Hebrew, Greek, Hellenist, so many others, Medes, Libyans, you can go to Acts chapter two and see the list of all the different nations and people groups that are represented there. They hear the same gospel. They hear the gospel preached to them. And the spirit works through the word and quickens their hearts and regenerates them and brings them to saving faith. And now they are united and become one. They're one in Christ, one faith, one savior. They are baptized into the one church. They become one. But that's a naughty race. every distinction that was between them. And that also did not immediately fix all the prejudice that had existed before. And so now as the church was growing and expanding and needing to provide for the needs of her members, some of the widows that had come from the Greek-speaking Hellenistic group of believers that joined the church on that day, they were being neglected From the daily distribution, from receiving the financial support or the food or the food ministry of the church. They were being overlooked. There's nothing we have here to indicate that this was done on purpose or done with any malicious intent. But nonetheless, it was still a problem. There are still those who were going without and and the language barrier that existed before it continued to exist and would have caused even more problems that might have caused that that division to take place. And so the grumbling begins and you can put yourself in that situation. You can see how they might have thought from the the Greek speaking Jews would have thought our Hebrew brothers and sisters in the church there. They're favoring their own friends. They're not considering our needs. They're neglecting our own. How could they do this? How could they be so cruel to us? They must be doing this on purpose. You see how the complaints, how the murmurs, how the division, that seed and that root of bitterness is starting to grow in the church. We know how this can happen, how things that are real problems but can be fixed easily, they can unfortunately take root and cause major divisions. So how are they going to address this problem? Was division, was hurt feelings, was bitterness, was destruction, was this an inevitable outcome? Would Satan have victory within the early church in this moment? That was the problem. That's what's at stake. So what was the solution to the problem? Let's consider that now. Verses two through six, we see the solution. Eventually the word got out to the apostles that this problem was happening. So what was their solution? What did they do? It's important. We must recognize, first of all, what their solution was not. They did not immediately take care of the problem themselves. They say in verse two, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. And later in verse four, they reiterate this point by saying that we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. The solution then was not more elders. And the solution was not to add another responsibility to the office of elder. But this is a real temptation to think that, for them to think that they ought to go and to fix and do it all by themselves. But if they were to do that, they would have caused some, some potentially created more problems. They wouldn't have solved the underlying issue, but have created more problems by doing so. On the one hand, if every matter of the church needed to be resolved by the apostles themselves, and if they had agreed to take over and run this food program by themselves, it would create a culture, it would have created a church in which everyone was becoming overly dependent upon the elder and the apostle for matters big and small. There wouldn't be any delegation. There wouldn't be any opportunity for those in the church to do this work. On the other hand, another potential problem is the temptation that's always there, always this temptation for the apostles, for elders to not want to give off the impression that, well, I'm too important for this work. I'm too important for this task. I simply cannot do it. Should they not have been willing to do whatever the church needed of them, no matter what it was, food distribution, cleaning toilets, whatever it might have been. What a blessing it is that we have this instructive episode from the early church recorded for us in Holy Scripture, inspired by the Spirit Himself working through Luke to write this down for us, because it teaches us so much about how the church is to function. The solution to this problem, then, is a holy division of labor. The solution was the institution and ordination and installation of men to another office, office that's separate from the elder, specifically given the responsibility to address this particular problem and to serve the church in these kinds of particular ways. So let's look at how these first deacons were ordained and installed. And as we look at this, we can glean some helpful instructions from the narrative of scripture. The solution was not more elders, but it was a holy division of labor. The apostles, with godly wisdom, they did not seek to fix this thing on their own. They did not think themselves, even so highly of themselves, to think that only they could fix the problem. But with godly wisdom, they called, see, they called the disciples, the entire number of the congregation together. They did not assign blame to anyone in the church, but they called a congregational meeting, as it were. They gathered all the number of the disciples and instructed and guided them to be a part of the solution. They were instructed to pick out from among their own number, seven men whom they would appoint, they would elect, whom they would ordain to do this work, to perform this duty. So what is this responsibility? It was summarized for us earlier in the phrase of setting tables. This Greek word behind the word setting, that's the Greek word for service, which is where we get the word deacon. That is what they were called to do. And so for the elder, for the apostle, they say, it is not right for us to give up what we have been called to do, which is ministry of the word and of prayer. to do this important work of service. Rather, we will call others to do this important work. This is a different field of labor. They were called to the ministry of the word and prayer. That was supposed to consume all of their time and energy for the good of the church. And so it was fitting then, likewise, for the good of the church, that another office be instituted for the work of service and care for the church members. And that is the office of deacon. The office of deacon can therefore be summed up as the office of sympathy and service after the example of the Lord Jesus. And it is the deacon's duty to minister to those who are in need. To the sick, to the friendless, to any who may be in distress. And in doing so, to develop the means of collecting gifts from church members. Remember the example of the early church, as they sold property, as they gave of what they had, so that that could be then given to those who had need. And the deacons are the ones who will distribute those gifts among the church members who need them. Exactly what we see here with those in need, the widows within the church who are in need of the daily distribution of food. And so how then were these men selected? We see here they were selected by the congregation and the congregation selected those men that fit this simple description. Men of good repute, and full of the spirit and of wisdom. You see, this is a spiritual office, and it ought to be filled with spirit-filled men, not supermen, not perfect men. None of those exist. but those who are filled with the Spirit, that is those who are living the normal, everyday Christian life that we are all called to live, dependent upon the Spirit in all that they do, and seeking to help others to do the same. Those are the men who are qualified to this office. And so we see in verse five, what they said was pleasing to the whole congregation. You are to appoint men of your own choosing. These are the men you are to look for. Now go and do it. And the whole thing, verse five, all of this that they said, the apostle said to them was pleasing to the congregation. And so we read that they selected these seven men. They selected Stephen, Philip, Procurus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus. They picked these seven men, all with Greek names. Don't miss that point. This congregation from different backgrounds, different languages, with significant disputes, even the Hebraic Jewish Christians who are in this church, which would have made up most likely the majority of the church, from their number chose seven men from Greek speaking backgrounds to oversee this program. So we see the basis of this selection. It was not ethnicity. It was not nationality. It was not a background. It was not any kind of earthly affinity or similarity that they could have picked from. They did not think of their own identity as Hebraic Christians so important that they at least wanted to make sure they had at least a simple majority. Well, at least four out of these seven needs to be someone like us. That's not what they were looking for. The men chosen were of good repute, who loved Christ and his church, and were full of the spirit and wisdom. Those were the men who were chosen. That was the solution to the problem. As long as there are churches, there will be a need for deacons to care for the needs of those church members. to provide the service and care following the perfect example of Christ himself who loves and cares and provides for his people. That was the solution to the problem. And so what is the result? What happens next? What's the result when churches embrace this holy division of labor with godly men called to both offices of elder and deacon? The result is verse seven. And the word of God continued to increase. And the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. The result then put simply is growth. But notice, it's not simply numerical growth. It says that the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. So the division could have resulted in this, with this complaint, it could have resulted in some kind of split, some kind of factions. But this complaint was adverted through the faithful work of deacons assisting the apostles through the work of the Spirit. And so the church did grow even more numerically afterwards. But it was not just numerical growth. You see, Luke also tells us that the Word of God continued to increase, and that many, including many of the former priests in the Levitical Old Covenant system, many of them also became obedient to the faith. And so through this holy division of labor, where deacons fulfilled their responsibilities of serving and administering the physical needs of the people, and the apostles were left to dedicate themselves completely to their responsibility, devoting themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. In doing so, in every way, there was growth in all areas of the church. And we can never minimize the importance of spiritual growth in the life of the church. It is so important. More than anything, more than numbers, more than successful food programs, more than any of that, what God desires of each and every one of us is our growth in holiness. That we would become holy like he is holy. that we become lovely as he is lovely. And as a church body, we would endeavor to serve one another as we all work together to stir up that grace and that faithful obedience to him. And we see how that happens through the faithful exposition and application of God's word in every area of our lives. We are word people. We need God's word, we need to have that minister to us and we need to have our needs met within the church, all of that working together for God's glory, for our good as we grow in holiness and in faith. That's how the early church handled this problem. And so in this story from the church in Jerusalem, we see God's pattern for how his church, how Christ has given us these two offices of elder and deacon. And when these offices are filled and functioning well, the church is always better off for it and God is glorified. So where does that leave us this morning? Where does that leave us here? Well, in Christ the King, in our church, we do not have any deacons at the moment. We have many who are doing some of that work already. We have some in a service committee, some in a finance committee who are doing the work to serve the church and to serve our people in this way and the variety of the things that are needed for a church to function and to be served well. But we have not yet, and not at this time at least, have had anyone ordained to this office with the laying on of hands as we see the biblical example tell us to do. But we know that churches need deacons, and our church is no different, and so we need deacons in our church. And so like I prayed at the start, if God has been working in your heart, in the midst of this sermon, if the Spirit has been working, convicting you to consider whether or not you are called to such an office, then that is a good thing. You ought to consider it. You ought to wrestle with it, whether or not God is calling you to hold such an office. We have not yet opened up nominations or the nomination period for new officers, elders, and deacons. That's the process that we have in our churches and in the PCA. And so like we see here in this text, it's open to the congregation. It's open to the entire group of disciples to say, from among your own number, you pick. And you nominate men who you would like to serve in this way. And so in the same way, when we open up nominations to the entire congregation, that is the opportunity to put forward names of men who you think should serve in either of these offices. And after that, the nominees then, they meet with the session, they go through training and equipping for this work that they're being called to before finally being voted upon and installed and ordained to that holy office. That's our process, just briefly stated. And we hope to start that process. We need to figure out when we can do that. Hopefully by the end of the year, we'd love to begin starting this process of raising up new officers in the church. But until then, please don't feel like there's anything stopping you from coming and speaking to one of us. about a calling that you might feel, or if you have a name that comes to mind when we talk about these kinds of men who serve in these ways, if a name comes to mind, then we would love to talk with you about that, how they should be serving in that way. And the last thing I wanna say as we wrap up this morning. In too many of our churches in this country, We have blurred the lines of biblical responsibility from elder and deacon. That's a real temptation. It's a real struggle. And I know I'm guilty of that at times too, wanting to just have my hands in everything or try to do everything or think that I need to do everything when that's not what God has called me to do necessarily. That's not how God has ordered the church to be. But sometimes we can blur the lines between elder and deacon. And sometimes we can also view the deacon as the lesser of the two offices, as an elder light, so to speak. But that's simply not true. We can never, we can never make insignificant what Christ has given to his church to be a blessing. We can never do that. And we see how much value and worth Christ gives to the office of deacon in the example of Stephen here in this passage. He was listed first among his brothers and he was the one described as a man full of faith and full of the Spirit. And we read from the next chapter in Acts earlier in our service. I love how this works out sometimes. I wish I could tell you that we're smart enough to plan this out so well. But we're not. This is how it worked out in the order of what we're reading. It's wonderful. We read about what Stephen has done. And so from chapter 6 to chapter 7, we see that Stephen is arrested. He's eventually murdered for his faith. But before that, and we read the first 16 verses of this beautiful speech he gives, he gives one of the most eloquent, beautiful, wonderful, biblical expositions of the Old Testament scriptures that we have anywhere in the New Testament. And to Stephen, Christ gave the honor of being the first martyr of the church. We don't know how much time passed between his ordination to holy office and his execution. But however short, however long it was, we know that it was a life well-lived because he served his Lord and Savior to the very end. And that is what we are all called to do. So no matter who you are in the church, no matter if you hold office or not, if God is calling you to an office, if he's calling you to be a faithful member of this church and whatever he's calling you to do, God is calling you to be like Stephen. to be full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, to love your Bible so well, to know them so well as he demonstrated in his speech and his sermon, and to trust and to serve Christ always, no matter what, every day of our lives. That's what he's calling all of us to do. And may the Lord in our church raise up deacons like Stephen to serve us and to be an example to us in that way. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we do pray that you would raise up men from this congregation to serve as deacons of this church. That is what you have taught us in your word. Thank you for giving us the example of the early church and your inspired word that instructs us even today, 2000 years later, how we are to live, how we are to order our church, what we need, what you've given us to be a healthy, well-functioning, loving, godly, church. May we all seek to be obedient to you wherever, however, and in whatever role you call us to. And we pray all of this in Jesus name. Amen.